Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 January 5

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From today's featured article

The Mark XIV bomb sight was developed by Royal Air Force Bomber Command during the Second World War. It was their standard bombsight for the second half of the War, replacing the First World War-era CSBS beginning in 1942. Essentially an automated version of the CSBS, it used a mechanical computer to update the sights in real-time. It required only 10 seconds of straight flight before a bomb drop, and automatically accounted for shallow climbs and dives. It contained a gyro stabilization platform that kept the sight pointed at the target as the bomber manoeuvred, dramatically increasing its accuracy and ease of sighting. It demonstrated accuracy roughly equal to the contemporary Norden bombsight, and was smaller, easier to use, faster-acting and better suited to night bombing. A post-war upgrade, the T-4, connected directly to the Navigation and Bombing System computers to automate the setting of wind speed and direction. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

LuEsther T. Mertz Library

... that the LuEsther T. Mertz Library (pictured), one of the world's largest botanical libraries, had 6.5 million plant specimens and 75 percent of the world's systematic botany literature in 2002?
... that under the leadership of ethnomusicologist Agnes Nebo von Ballmoos, the University of Liberia choir performed around the world, including at Lincoln Center?
... that the Clan Mackintosh fought against the Clan MacDonald and Clan Cameron in 1688, in what is claimed to have been the last Scottish clan battle?
... that Australian biologist Lee Berger identified Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis as being responsible for the decline and extinction of hundreds of amphibian species?
... that a protected structure on Britain Quay, once adorned with a time ball, was demolished to make way for the construction of Ireland's tallest building?
... that after moving to the Canary Islands in 1992, future politician Luc André Diouf ran out of money and was homeless for 42 days?
... that posting one's feelings on social media is a form of affect labeling, and may help reduce emotional distress?
... that when Donnis Thompson was appointed the University of Hawaii's first women's athletic director, she was given a budget of only $5,000?

In the news

Qasem Soleimani

In Baghdad, Iraq, an American airstrike kills General Qasem Soleimani (pictured), commander of the Iranian Quds Force.
In darts, Peter Wright defeats Michael van Gerwen to win the PDC World Darts Championship.
More than 85 people are killed in a suicide truck bombing at a police checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somalia.
Bek Air Flight 2100 crashes near Almaty, Kazakhstan, killing at least 12 people and injuring 54 others.

On this day

January 5: Earth at perihelion (07:48 UTC, 2020); Twelfth Night (Western Christianity)

Eris and its moon, Dysnomia

1675 – Franco-Dutch War: French troops defeated Imperial and Brandenburg forces at the Battle of Turckheim in Alsace.
1875 – The Palais Garnier opera house in Paris was formally inaugurated.
1953 – Waiting for Godot by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, termed the "most significant English language play of the 20th century", premiered in Paris.
1970 – An earthquake registering M_w 7.1 struck Tonghai County in southern China, killing at least 10,000 people and eventually spurring the creation of the nation's largest earthquake monitoring system.
2005 – Eris (pictured), the largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, was discovered through image analysis by a team of astronomers at the Palomar Observatory in California.

George Johnston (d. 1823) · Konrad Adenauer (b. 1876) · Bradley Cooper (b. 1975)

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Today's featured picture

Harvest is one of a series of paintings by Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh depicting country life. It is subtitled Harvest at La Crau, with Montmajour in the Background. A wheat field is shown in the foreground, with farmhouses, ricks, ladders, carts and activities associated with harvest, and in the distance, purple-blue mountains are set against a turquoise sky. The work was painted in oils on canvas in June 1888, with van Gogh writing that he found the landscape at La Crau in Provence to be as "beautiful and endless as the sea". The painting is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which houses the largest Van Gogh collection in the world, with around 200 paintings, 400 drawings and 700 letters by the artist.

Painting credit: Vincent van Gogh

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